Buffalo’s Week 1 win over Houston gave Joe Brady his first regular-season victory as Bills head coach, but Monday’s Victory Monday session wasn’t a victory lap.
Brady spent much of his time at the podium focusing on the players around him, especially Ed Oliver. The defensive tackle returned to his hometown of Houston for the game, with family and friends in the building, and Brady made clear how much that meant inside the locker room.
He said he “still hurt(s) every single day that I see him and can’t fathom what he’s going through.” Brady added that “it meant a lot to the guys and I know he needed all the guys for that,” and he called Oliver the player most deserving of the game ball.
The Bills came away with the win, but Brady didn’t sugarcoat the messier parts. When asked about the defense, he pointed to the bigger picture and the mistakes that nearly put the game in danger. “look, all three phases weren’t good enough yesterday.
Right? And we have to - there’s too many penalties across the board.”
That theme carried through the rest of his comments. Brady said it’s easy to get caught up in the final score and miss the warning signs underneath it, what he called the team’s “smoke detector.”
He mentioned offensive ball security, turnover-worthy plays and penalties as issues that could have turned the day into a much tougher result. With Detroit coming up on a short week, he made it clear the cleanup has to start fast.
Even with the rough edges, Brady liked what he saw after halftime from the defense, which tightened up and forced Houston into punting situations. The unit under new defensive coordinator Jim Leonhard is still taking shape, but there were bright spots, including the way Greg Rousseau handled his first game as a 3-4 outside linebacker.
Penalties, Brady said, also have to be viewed through the lens of how a game is being officiated. He explained, “see how the game is being called. You know, that was a big thing - like, you know, sometimes some games they’ll let you play, some games they’re gonna call it and we have to be able to adjust in those situations.”
Brady also said the Bills are still learning what they are as a group. He described the team as having “a pulse,” but still working through how to use players on offense, defense and special teams. What stood out to him was the way the Bills adjusted, played through the game and handled the red zone work.
The most detailed stretch of Brady’s availability came when the conversation turned to DJ Moore and what his presence means for the offense. Brady broke down the coverage stress Moore creates and how that opens doors for others.
He said, “(I)f I’m Josh, I would have thought that there were actually - he was leaning towards DJ, but also outside leverage on Dalton to double Dalton in that situation. Like, to get to be able to throw a post in man coverage, that means there has to be a bracket on somebody or a lean towards somebody in that situation.
And that’s what gave us the opportunity at Josh Palmer.”
That was the bigger point Brady kept circling back to: Buffalo now has options. Teams can’t just erase one receiver and assume the rest of the passing game disappears.
Brady said that with Moore on the field, defenses have to decide whether to double him, which can leave Dalton Kincaid in one-on-one coverage or create openings for Palmer, Khalil Shakir and others. He also said Moore has the ability to “made the play without making the play.”
Brady tied that back to Josh Allen’s decision-making, noting that the play on the post was an alert and that Allen trusted what he saw. He said, “the trust that Josh has in that situation, that’s strictly an alert on the post, you know, if it’s there and they got the off coverage and he’s felt the safety was leaning, to be able to take it. And so I think it’s a combination of a lot of things of Josh just trusting the play, but when you have guys like DJ, Khalil, you know, Dalton in those situations it’s like ‘alright if they wanna take someone away, we have somebody else that we can go to.”
Kincaid got a long look from Brady too, and the coach didn’t hide how important the tight end is when he’s healthy. Brady said that “even a banged-up Dalton Kincaid when he’s out on the football field helps us,” then praised the way Kincaid played Sunday, especially in the run game. He said Kincaid’s work helped Buffalo stay in 13 personnel and keep him on the field in different situations, including the play where he caught a deep corner route after the offense moved the pocket.
Brady also pointed out how often Kincaid was matched up across the secondary, a sign of how much he can tilt a game when he’s at his best. For a Bills offense still sorting through its identity, that kind of flexibility matters. And with the Lions waiting in just a few days, Brady’s message was clear: the win was good, the tape was not clean enough, and there’s no time to linger.
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